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1. The Fashion Industry Remain Profitable    August 13, 2018 The unstoppable rise of the fashion industry is set to continue, with many people now taking advantage of affordable designer clothing offered to us by large shops like Top Shop or Primark. It’s an amazing thing really, something that has transformed the discount retailers from a shabby place you’d hope not to be seen in to a place you have to get to early before they run out of stuff. This begs the question, how does fashion and the limitless brands  industry in general remain profitable? There are numerous reasons for this, but one is simply the fact that the manufacturing of many of the clothes offered by the big discount retailers’ takes place overseas where costs of labour are cheaper. This means that companies can pay manufacturers less than they would if the clothes were manufactured in the country of their sale, usually Western Europe and North America. There is an ethical dilemma to this, but it’s just something that consumers have come to expect. There is an out of sight, out of mind attitude that people have managed to accept in exchange for cheap and high quality clothing. But the fashion industry quite clearly does not consist purely of big corporate manufacturers taking advantage of third world labour costs. There are a huge number of niche artisanal designers and manufacturers that are quite profitable too, so how do they do it? Many of the more niche designers and manufacturers charge a lot more for their products to counter the cost of manufacturing. This is the beauty of an artisanal product; there is a limited number available so people will pay a premium price for the ‘exclusivity factor’. However, many designers believe that fashion should be available for everyone and some refinements in the manufacturing process have made it possible for them to sell their clothes at a price closer to what customers have come to expect from larger chain stores. If you run a manufacturing operation you are going to use a large amount of automated machinery. This machinery is expensive, and may break or

2. require maintenance quite often – which adds to the overall cost of manufacturing. By using modern condition monitoring equipment manufacturers can undertake predictive maintenance – repairing or maintaining a machine before a fault occurs. Faults in a manufacturing operation cause a large amount of aggravation, particularly for niche manufacturers. Hold ups and delays mean that you can fail to meet demand and this means lost business. By monitoring the condition of textile machinery and equipment this can be avoided. For example, analysis on the oil used in some types of machines can detect wear. Oil sampling and analysis can detect fragments of metal, even in trace amounts, to help determine whether a machine (or machine part) is likely to fail and when – this means maintenance and repairs can be carried out in good time, thus reducing the cost of manufacturing for artisan fashion industry professionals. Niche designers also often have a small retail presence compared to their corporate equivalents. High street shops are expensive to run, and can often be unprofitable although they may promote brand awareness. This is why many niche designers have turned to eCommerce as a solution to the challenge of reducing costs and to compete with big corporate fashion companies in terms of competitive pricing. By operating solely online, one can have a more limitless brands  streamlined approach. With people buying directly from the manufacturer, with no need for a retail space or employees, costs are reduced substantially and this business model means that niche fashion designers are able to remain profitable too